The immediate effect of the application of discipline to this variety of material is the creation of an ideal democracy. All of the new arrivals are thrown indiscriminately into the melting pot, and no attention is paid to any man’s antecedents. The boys of rich and influential parents are not allowed little life-preservers of wealth, family, and position whereby they might remain on top, but they must boil away, sometimes on top, sometimes at the bottom of the pot, rubbing and bumping against boys to whom riches and influence are strangers. Whether they sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, depends on individual effort alone. Men are esteemed at West Point for what they are and not for what they have. Each man feeling that he has as good an opportunity to succeed as the other man becomes imbued from the outset of his cadet career with the spirit of democracy that exists at the Academy. From the moment that a cadet enters West Point, his past life, experiences, advantages, record, disappear into oblivion so far as the authorities and other cadets are concerned. No reference is ever made to any cadet’s home, to his connections, to his family, unless he introduces the subject. Once he becomes a cadet, a new clean sheet of his life is started for him, and whatever is entered thereon depends solely upon himself. Every man at West Point has the same chance--the chance of advancement based upon merit and efficiency and upon nothing else. It makes no difference to the officers in charge or to the other cadets whether a man’s family is wealthy or distinguished. As a matter of fact this information is rarely known because all of the cadets report together; they are totally unknown to those in charge so that there is no possible way to ascertain anything about the cadet’s antecedents. They lose their identity completely, and so much so that the upper-classmen take months to learn their real names, meanwhile calling them by the generic names, Ducrot, Dumbguard, and Dumbjohn. The character of the rooms in barracks illustrates most strikingly this democratic ideal that discipline fosters. The plain and homely furnishings of each room are identical in pattern, material, and quantity, so that no cadet is housed better than his fellow. The walls are free from pictures, the windows from curtains, the floors from rugs. There are no soft easy chairs but only an old-fashioned wooden one for each man, that is as hard for the rich cadet as for the poor Mr. Ducrot. Nor are there any cliques that occupy particular rooms in the barracks. Each company has so many rooms for its members, and as far as possible the men within the company may choose their roommates. Their selection is made on mutual attraction and congeniality solely. Whenever two chaps enjoy each other’s companionship, that indefinable mingling of mute spirits, they try to room together.